As I jotted down memories of my triumphs and progress, I also remembered the struggles I went through. As an immigrant, I knew five other Indonesian immigrant women whom I met at random and from my close communities, who were assaulted and silenced. They only had visas and awaited their green cards, and I was only a U.S. Citizen for a year at the time. But, I was assaulted the first time when I had a green card as well. The second time I was assaulted, and I suspected they were connected, I was told "welcome to America," by the detective who took my case and told me that "it's not that I don't believe you, you had no evidence against this nice man." Both men who assaulted me were American citizens, priviledged and from well known families.
I wondered how many immigrant women were silenced because they were not U.S. Citizens and how many of them didn't receive any resources. I recalled applying for Medi-Cal twice because the first time, I was rejected and I believed it was because of my skin color. As an Asian woman, the system conglomerates all Asian races as one and the discrimination towards us because of the model minority myth gave the social services system a bias against me. I was not only silenced, I was ignored and told that based on my race, I didn't deserve the help.
I began to notice how the system became more discriminatory towards me, because I was an Indonesian immigrant, and because I was newly naturalized. I felt I was used as a weapon for the social problem of the United States to resolve the inequality in poverty through furthering my demise by the system. The way the police department handled my case, showed me that they could careless if I had died because I was Asian and Asians were not supposed to be raped; so they denied my case and closed it. The same went with disability and mental health services, as I applied twice and only got the mental health services and not the disability. If I was an immigrant of another race, would I have gotten the resources? This was California, where it was supposed to be more diverse. I felt as a sacrifice to even out the statistics to gratify other minority groups, and so did my fellow Indonesian immigrant survivors. I realized that there were more of us who were survivors who were silenced as sexual assault became more and more common in the United States and around the world.
The statistics often lied, because there were more Asians than truly reported. I knew from personal experience, but why did the system silenced us?
Just write.